The Procrastinator's Picnic: 3 Things You Really Need

Oh, there are some lovely picnics out there!  If you get on pintrest you know what a magical thing a perfectly planned picnic can be!  Would you just look at this woodland set up on Kha Do's page or basically Janice Johnston’s whole board!  Granted, most of these were well planned and positioned for proposals or photo shoots, but how romantic! 

...and this is us! =)

I don’t know about you, but our kids love the idea of a picnic as well.  Truthfully, they were not deterred at all by basically having picnics every night for a couple months until our table arrived.  And now that it’s here I’ve been asked countless times if we can go to the neighboring arboretum for a picnic.  I kept putting it off because I needed to plan and prepare, get a perfect basket and containers, and figure out a way to haul a tiny vase of flowers into the middle of nowhere with two younglings and a moose of a dog in tow.  It didn’t take me too long to realize that might not be realistic for us at this stage in our lives!  But my brain is always trying to find a way to make things work, to get creative with the situation, and I started to whittle down these perfect picnics into something more practical for us right now.  I started to ask myself what we’d really need.

1.       Something edible: chances are, you’re going to be eating anyway, and, at least for us, lunches are often cold.  Sandwiches are great, but we were slightly pressed for time, so I just started throwing in what we had.  This is what I ended up with: a cucumber, sliced cheese, salami, crackers, guacamole, and an apple.  The only prep I did once we got there and that was just to cut the fruit and veggie with my pocket knife

2.       Somewhere to sit: we have an awesome place to visit down the road, and I’m super grateful for that.  But it’s really not necessary.  When we first moved down here, we would go out in our yard or even in our living room.  We once even had a snow picnic in Alaska!  A blanket to sit on is great but, again, not absolutely necessary.

3.       Someone to break bread (or whatever you have) with: Okay, technically you could have a picnic by yourself, but I feel the fun thing about picnics is being able to share them (and ideally the outdoors) with others. 

Finding Tiny Wonders Together

After a stressful morning of running all around town, this was such a perfect way to refocus and connect!  We looked for nature treasures on the way and tucked them in our bag.  We found a cozy place down by the river and settled in for our meal.  My little son said, “Mama, look!  It’s so nice to just sit here and look at how pretty the river is going down hill!”  Yes!  I love it when he gets it like that!

Views from our hike out

Their highlight was finding these two great dirt hills and sliding (or scooting, rather) all the way down!

 

All this to say that it was wonderful, refreshing, and imperfectly perfect. But we grew together which is much more important than my tiny vase of flowers! =)  I hope this might encourage you to take a picnic with the ones you love and just enjoy it without letting it be a huge inconvenience.  Hope you have a great week!  Oh, on that note, we may not have internet this week, but I shall return!

Seven Ways to Find Playscapes Near You (And 10 Pre-Tested in Lane County!)



Wonders of Nature (A Little Golden Book)

by Jane Werner Watson, Eloise Wilkin

This is our life right now: Wonders of Nature.  (If you get a chance to pick up a copy of this book, Wonders of Nature, do!  So sweet and poetic!)  Every morning, the littles wake up and before I can finish picking up their breakfasts, they’re begging to get their shoes on (or not) and escape to the great outdoors.  This week we’ve been studying beetles and caterpillars, flattening mole hills, picking apples, and splashing in rivers.  I say that in multiple because we’ve been exploring fair number of parks since we’ve been here and an even higher proportion this past week while Josh was at Peterson University in Oakland.  Parks seem to distract kids from missing their dad the best, they meet friends, and sleep great that night!

Willamalane

It’s always hard finding where to go to play in a new town.  So far I’ve been very impressed with the parks in the Eugene area, so I wanted to share our local experiences with others in the area who might be curious, as well as general ways you can look for play areas in any town. 

Armitage

How to discover new play areas near you:

1.       Drive Bys:  You know, to be quite honest, we’ve found the majority of parks by mistake.  Nothing beats exploring on your own, getting a little lost, finding some hidden gems and figuring out a new area.  My first memorized route in this town of crazy roads and traffic was to the grocery store (priorities, right?) and it was from there that I spied at least three of the parks we’ve visited!  Look for the brown rectangle park signs and yellow diamond playground signs.  In fact, even the kiddos recognize and seem to be on constant look out for these ones.

More info about recreational signs here

2.       Google (or other search engine) maps: Type in “playground” on the map and watch those red dots pop up.  Or “park” if you’re not particular about it having a play structure and swings.  A little tricky knowing just what you’re getting into, but it will often link to the parks web page and you can choose what area you want.  If you don’t see many, try zooming in and the smaller ones will appear.  Sorry if this is too elementary, but I myself am fairly technologically challenged, so it took me a little while to figure this out!  Maybe I can save someone else with a similar condition a minute or two! =)

Amazon

3.       County Parks home page. Search for (your county) county parks.  The Lane County Parks page  has links to a variety of different parks as well as regulations and passes.  They also have a page listing all the parks in Lane County with information on the amenities provided, though the presence of playgrounds is not always mentioned.

4.       State Parks: Search for (your state) State Parks to find their web page.  Oregon’s is definitely geared more toward camping and outdoor adventures rather than playgrounds.  And of course it covers the whole state, so you have to narrow your search.  But if that’s what you’re looking for, this can also be a great tool. 

Dorris

5.       Kaboom:  Have you ever heard of Kaboom.org ?  You just type in your town and it pops up a map and list of play areas near you, both indoor and outdoor.  And you can add in the ones not yet listed!  Pretty convenient.  I’m going to have to play with this one some more.   

6.       School rules:  Did you know public school playgrounds are available to the public for play during non-school hours?  We visited these all the time growing up and got to discover many fun places we would have never seen otherwise!

Hendricks

7.       Word-of-mouth:  Do you know anyone in the area?  Especially if they have similar interests they are probably your best bet for directing you to the spots you’ll really enjoy.  Or, if you can find one park, ask others you come in contact with where else they like to go.  In my experience, people are usually more than willing to share their knowledge!

Mt. Pisgah

Just prepping this page I found so many more parks I want to check out!  I hope you can benefit from it, too!  Play is so necessary for everyone old and young alike and promotes physical and mental health.  Sometimes just knowing where to go can be half the battle.  Especially for homeschoolers or those with young children who may not have access to the play structures on a regular basis.  And you can use a lot of these searches as you travel, too!  Just remember to check local park regulations and fees; they’re usually posted on site.

Amazon

My kids are totally into playgrounds right now, so those are always at the top of their lists!  But for those locals (or newly locals) reading this, I wanted to share a couple of our favorite spots so far:

1.       Discovery Village in Skinner Butte Park: Awesome play structures and water play!  Pretty busy and open with tons to do.

Discovery Village

2.       Fairmount City Park: Smallish park tucked behind the university that also has water play.  Very peaceful secluded feel to this park.

Fairmount

3.       Amazon Park: Lots of fun structures that seemed to enthrall a wide range of ages.  Outdoor pool in the summer and miles of paths.

Amazon

4.       Willamalane Park: On our way to the grocery store! =)  Lots of play structures, skate park, and apparently there’s an indoor swim facility we have yet to discover.

Willamalane

5.       Hendricks Park: Although it does have a few swings, we appreciate this heavily wooded area best for its peaceful walking paths.

Hendricks

6.       Dorris Ranch: more info on this one in my last post, but this park has miles of paths, mostly through century-old hazelnut groves.  They also feature a living history village.  Although open to educational groups by reservation, we visited a community day last Friday and found it very interesting!

Dorris

7.       Petersen Barn: this was the first park we visited (found word-of-mouth) and loved the sandy playground and open space.  Turns out, our new church meets in the community center here!

Petersen Barn

8.       Dorena Lake: nice swim area and wooded picnic area on this lovely lake in the hills.  A little bit of a drive from Eugene.

9.       Lowell park and Dexter Lake Park: equipment to climb on and a great swimming area.  The day we went here it was almost 100 degrees!  The cool lake was so pleasant!  Again, about a half hour drive.

Dexter Lake

10.     Armitage Park: paved paths that wind around by the river, gravel bars and large fields with picnic areas.

Armitage paths passing under bridges

Where is your favorite place to go outside and play?  Do you have one great spot that you keep going back to, or do you like to discover new place each time you go out?  I hope you have a great week and happy exploring!

The Long, Long Hike: Scavenger Printables!

Have you ever been on a hike and realized it was taking WAY longer than you thought it would?  I mean, sometimes it doesn’t really matter, like when it’s just you and the dog and you don’t have anywhere to be.  I really love hikes like that, they’re so peaceful and you can just explore and be spontaneous!  But, when it’s just you and the dog and the preschooler and the toddler and getting on toward suppertime, it gets a bit more worrisome!  That was our experience yesterday as we set off to explore a new trail system called Dorris Ranch.

Dorris Ranch is not a ranch at all, but rather fourteen individual hazelnut groves, woodland plots and a few open meadows on over 250 acres.  The hazelnut (or filbert) groves date back to 1905 and apparently half of our nations hazelnut trees originated from the Dorris Ranch!  There are miles of winding trails through the groves, but we naturally decided to take the shortest loop (about a half mile) as we planned to visit a new playground as soon as we were done.   Thankfully our adventure boy is in this “be prepared for anything” stage and I’m so glad he is!  He insisted on bringing his backpack with water and trail mix and we tucked a park map in there, too. Though the colored pencils and bungee cord were not found to be as helpful, we were prepared.

The map was nice to have, though I may not have looked at often enough.  We totally missed our cut off trail and took a loop that ended up being well over two miles.  With the wee ones in sandals and it getting close to dinner time.  I was bracing myself for the meltdowns, but attempted to be proactive in motivating them and distracting them from their discomfort.  And you know what?  It worked!  And I feel like they learned stuff, or at the very least, practiced what they already knew.  I was so pleased I thought I’d share with you in the rare case that you might find yourself in a similar predicament one day.  But probably not.  Most people actually read the maps they pick up for the hike!  Haha! Oh, well, it was an adventure all right!

So first off, we took a lot of breaks.  But not as soon as I heard a complaint.  Well, toddlers don’t really do waiting very well, so she did get carried a fair portion.  But when our bigger hiker thought he could go no farther, we would pick the farthest spot we could see to choose as a resting place.  Then we would sit down, take a drink of water and a handful of trail mix and I got to explain how muscles get stronger by being used and how we need to feed them the protein from the nuts we were eating (and the meat later on).  We kept that new playground as a goal when they didn’t want to get moving again.

As we trudged along we made up a sort of scavenger hunt of a few things from the schoolbooks this morning: shapes and colors.  This was such a great motivator as it kept them engaged in their surroundings and seeking to get farther down the trail to discover the next surprise!  Here are our results for the shapes.  Some of them are a bit of a stretch, but given the circumstances, I thought we did quite well:

Circles, ovals, triangle, square, rectangle, octagon.  At one point our loop followed a paved bike path so we were able to find many geometric shapes.

And the colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, white, black, grey, brown.

Oh, and giving points made it extra exciting.  We weren’t really even counting up to anything, but they were points!  We also had the random teaching moments like how the hazlenuts we saw lying on the ground were the hazelnut tree’s seeds and how the whole tree grew from the little nut-seed.  We talked about how the noisy wind bending the trees’ boughs was like God: powerful and strong, but invisible.  We can see what He’s doing but not God Himself.  We even took time (too late) to look over the map together and begin to talk about how they work and how they help us.  Yup, I was pretty much just preaching to myself there.  And random excitement: we found a really tame parakeet.  Pretty sure those aren’t wild around here.  I tried to catch him, but he didn’t think that was a good idea.  Though he let me get close enough to touch him several times.  I didn’t even know what to do!  I’m sure he’s someone’s escaped pet! 

At last we saw the truck!  And it was all downhill from there (literally and figuratively!)  We made it, and with no meltdowns!  Thank You, God!  And for those of you curious, we found a lovely playground and stayed there until dusk and the little ones sure slept good that night!  I did get to thinking these scavenger hunts might be fun to do even when not necessary.  So I whipped up some check lists to use on our next hike to help keep the focus. Maybe I'll keep a pen to cross the words off or better yet: stickers!  If you'd be interested in them, you can just click the photo to enlarge it and print a couple to keep in your vehicle for your next journey!  Happy learning and adventuring!